[1] The WFMS of the MEC was founded in the Tremont Street Methodist Episcopal Church, in Boston, Massachusetts, March 1869, and incorporated under the laws of the State of New York in 1884.

Its fields of operation included: Europe (Bulgaria, Italy, France); Latin America (Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay); Asia (Malaysia, China, Korea, India, Japan, The Philippines); and Africa (Algeria, Angola, Portuguese East Africa, Rhodesia, Tunis).

As a result of prompt and efficient measures to procure funds, the services of Isabella Thoburn and of Clara Swain, M.D., were secured.

These two women sailed from New York City for India, via England, on November 3, 1869, reaching their destination early in January, 1870.

This society sent to India, China, Korea, and Japan the first woman medical missionary ever received in those countries.

[2] By 1903, its 34th year, it had 265 missionaries carrying on its work in India, China, Japan, Korea, Africa, Bulgaria, Italy, South America, Mexico, and the Philippines, by means of women's colleges, high schools, seminaries, hospitals, dispensaries, day schools, and "settlement work".

[2] The first number of the society's first periodical, The Heathen Woman's Friend, appeared in June, 1869, with Harriet Merrick Warren as its editor for 24 years.